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Come on and join author Melissa Bradley as she sets off on her latest adventure...

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If you are not 18, please exit stage left. While there is normally nothing naughty here, I do write and review erotica so there are links to spicy stuff and the occasional heated excerpt.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Checking In And I Finally Saw Brave

Thank you all for sticking with me while I am on deadline. I'm nearly finished so...Yay! Thanks, too, for all the wonderful comments you left last week on the awesome Girls Kick Ass Says So On the T-Shirt post from my super cool friend Mind of Mine. I appreciate your thoughts very much.

Funny enough, in keeping with that theme, I was taking a chill from my frantic writing/editing pace and had the opportunity to at long last see Brave. Now that all 5 billion of the rest you have, LOL.

Wow, was I ever disappointed. I was so disappointed that I could not concentrate on anything til I got this out. Not disappointed in the animation, that was spectacular. In fact, it blew me away, but just like with Avatar, it was glitter to try and distract me from the utter dreckitude that was the story.

On a side rant, what was with the butt cheeks and the extra bouncy breasts on the housekeeper? Not to mention Bear Cub Brother's swan dive into Cleavage Town... Yikes!

Back to my point. We finally, finally get a girl hero from Pixar and they make it into a stereotypical chick "adventure" and I use that term very loosely. There really was no adventure here. It all comes down to a witch's spell and Merida's bitchy 'tude with her mommy. All because of what essentially amounts to a boy problem. So she didn't want to get married, boo hoo... BFD. She still wore a dress, the central villain is still a witch and her problem is hardly the ultimate destruction of her way of life. Pixar really suckered me in with that "Change your fate" line. Thank God I only paid $1.30 at the Red Box but even so I want my money back.

Mulan had it all over Merida in the bravery department as far as I'm concerned. I wanted, nay expected a girl kicking ass just like the boys, saving her kingdom, facing dragons, monsters and warlords hellbent on destruction. Not witches and curses. Or God help me, bears. Why is it we women always get to face evil forest creatures? Are you effing kidding me? Next thing you know there'll be a Brave Part Deux with Merida running up against an evil Bambi. Honestly, fellas, we women are your absolute equals in every way so quit giving us such weak stories when it's our turn to grab some glory. They're BORING. As to the women who had a part in this, shame on you for not representing.

I know some of you out there are like "Geez Mel, it's a cartoon, what's with the attitude? Can't you ever just turn off your feminist and enjoy something?" No, I can't. Pixar had an opportunity with Brave to break new ground and they didn't. They trod right over the same tired territory and spent more time making Merida's hair look great than they did on actual plot. I'm not encouraging my friends to buy their daughters a Brave anything from Disney. Merida is really a glass ceiling hero. We'll let you do some badass things like be an expert archer, but you still have to wear the dress and save yourself from a witch. No warlords for you, you're a girl. And of course we must always make sure that the theme of mother daughter relationships is front and center because we all know girls never have relationships with their fathers.

I haven't talked to anyone whose seen it and I'm upset that they failed at what they claimed to be out to do. My daughter and I really wanted to see this together because of the lead female character. Really things like Beauty and the Beast were a horror for a young female. I used that film to teach her how books and movies condition women into thinking that "love and romance: can turn a bad man into a good one.

High fives on Beauty and the Beast! Fairytales like that have ruined girls. It's insidious how they start conditioning us from the cradle to accept that love wins everything and it's up to women to provide that love. Ooh now I want to rant on that story too. ;)

Wow. I love that you cut filmmakers no slack when they bait and switch with the promise of forward thinking but the actuality of the same ol' nonsense. Don't let cartoons off the hook - that's the start of most people encountering pop culture when they're kids.

Exactly! We start with the cartoons and the idea is already planted in the kids' minds. Girls can only face other girls, witches, etc. Why? Why aren't we knights of the realm rescuing the prince? And women for the most part accept this because we are conditioned to see things like traditional roles. Brave would have been better if they'd have made Fergus a single father or Eleanor the ruling queen with Merida having to defeat an actual strong enemy with brute physical strength.

I'll be honest I was pretty letdown on the first viewing as well, expecting more from Pixar but on second viewing I was able to enjoy it more. Still it's not what it could have been, they played it way too safe.

Hi Donna! It wasn't a departure enough for me. I felt like I was watching them retread the same square foot of playing field. I agree, it is a nice story for mothers and daughters, but there is so much more to us than mother daughter relationships. I wished Pixar would have seen that.

Hi Morgan! Yeah, I really was struck by how unoriginal this story was. They made such a big deal out of making a Pixar film especially for girls and they go and play it safer than a life jacket in a bathtub. Talk about bad news...:)

Bummer; this is on my to be seen list. I wasn't impressed with the previews, but I'm not much into animation anyway. I'm sure I will watch it sometime with my grandkids though. I think I was this disappointed with the movie Hannah too.

Well, I probably wouldn't watch it anyway, but now I won't bother. Thanks so much for stopping by to see me yesterday, I have missed you lots, and can see that you have been super busy too. Happy for you about ND!

You know it's too bad that this is the kind of message that only gets talked about in a girl adventure. I had such high hopes for this one, I guess that's why I was so disappointed. I had the bar too high in my mind.

I feel bad that your daughter was disappointed. There should have been more to get girls excited. The trailer really built this up.

"spent more time making Merida's hair look great than they did on actual plot." - lol, so true. Anyway, whether cliched or not, I enjoyed it for what it was. It was a bit too "light-weighted" compared to most Pixar flicks, but that didn't ruin the experience for me.

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